Hydrogen from urine the new path...

[Farrah Day]

3 words   **Just Build It** 

Not quite as simple as just pissing in an electrolyser though is it? Some thought and consideration has to be given to this - the first being that most home built electrolysers are common duct for hydrogen and oxygen, so-called HHO.

The chemistry is important as I don't believe we would be getting oxygen from urine. Rather we would be getting hydrogen and other unwanted, probably unpleasant gases which we would need to do something with (preferably not breathe). Furthermore, unlike an electrolyte in water that does not get used up, I believe we would soon be left with just water as the urea would actually get used up.

It will therefore be more complicated an electrolyser design than what most of us already have, plus there is the consideration of any toxic gases that may be evolved. So pissing in an open duct electrolyser and 'just doing it' might not be such a good idea until we know what else apart from H2 is evolved, and what the implications are.

That said, the efficiency of obtaining hydrogen this way would appear to be over 3 times that of standard electrolysis, which can't be a bad thing as long as we're not going to be poisoning the air we breathe.

[Xaero_Vincent]

You'll need to drink a bunch of water to generate all this piss.

How much energy will be lost due to needing to isolate or contain the unwanted by-product gasses from the reaction?

Also... what if I want a power booster on my unit? Will the device come with a toilet seat attachment for producing "nitro methane" from solid waste?

[Cloxxki]

Perhaps an additional GEET reactor would come in handy here, when the electrolized unine gets combusted?

I seem to remember that GEET has been tested, with clean enough exhaust gasses, running on a mixture with at least a significant urine component.

[ResinRat2]

Actually, this is interesting. I followed your link Infringer and it gave link to another article that gave a schematic of the process. Notice that Potassium Carbonate and nitrogen are the other byproducts along with the hydrogen from the process. This must mean they are adding potassium to the reaction. Probably potassium hydroxide, I am not sure.

So throwing up a few calculations we get:

Urea: CAS# 58069-82-2
CH₄N₂O
MW= 60g. / mole



2 Moles H2   X  22.4 Liters H2     X   Mole Urea       =    44.8 Liters H2
Mole Urea             Mole H2            60 grams Urea        60 grams Urea     


(0.95) X (44.8 ) =   42.6 Liters of H2 / 60 grams of 95% Urea   

or (0.05) X (44.8 ) =  2.24 Liters of H2 / 60 grams of 5% Urea (URINE) 

This looks to me like just a novel way of processing waste urine and getting a hydrogen byproduct out of it.  Urine would have to be separated from other human waste, which we don't normally do, so this seems a bit unpractical. I haven't been able to get at the full article yet so I don't have all the details of what they had in mind for this process, but I guess it is just processing a human waste product and getting out useful byproducts of nitrogen, hydrogen, and potassium carbonate; which can all be sold.

My guess is that the potassium is added to cleverly bind up the carbon and oxygen leftovers that would be released as carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.

[PYRODIN123321]

Too bad this kind of stuff isn't used more....save the earth and all....human waste recycled just like anything we use....good stuff

peace